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truck, Stevo. I wanted to crack her head and mess her
brains out all over the street. She was never gonna bother
us again.’
‘Oh, our Shortie!’ says Stevo in exasperation. ‘He can
be so dof.’
He makes his brother promise that he will not
attempt anything silly again. Instead he must kill the cat,
as per his instructions, and cook it in the magistrate’s
kitchen. Just as he did with the rotten tripe. That’s what
psychology means. The cat will be a masterpiece. It will
break her down and it will make her run mad.
‘She will shit her pants out of her wits before she
knows it,’ says Stevo.
‘There are two cats now, Stevo,’ says Shortie.
‘How do you know there are two cats?’
‘I watch that house like you said I should. I saw the
bodyguard play with two cats on the front lawn.’
‘Kill them both,’ says Stevo firmly.
‘Two cats? I can’t kill two cats, Stevo,’ says Shortie,
almost pleading.
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‘You are a Visagie, my china,’ says Stevo, almost
cajoling. ‘Remember what Ma always says—we Visagies
are not afraid of nothing. A Visagie can kill two cats. A
Visagie can kill a hundred cats.’
‘I don’t mind killing her any time, Stevo, especially
as she pissed me off sending you to jail and all. But a cat
is another story. I can’t kill a little pussy cat. I don’t think
it’s gonna work no ways, Stevo.’
It’s going to work all right, Stevo insists. Even
though the magistrate has changed the locks Shortie can
get Fingers Matatu from Soweto to pick them. Fingers
Matatu can pick any lock, even though he has now grown
so old and arthritic.
‘And don’t steal nothing, my china,’ says Stevo. ‘Just
cook the cats and leave.’
‘Jeez, Stevo,’ protests Shortie. ‘I’m not a thief.’
‘I was just saying, Shortie—in case you get tempted.
I don’t want it to look like robbery. We are decent folks,
my china, we don’t steal nothing. Plus, it’s going to spook
her like hell when everything in the house is intact but
there are two fat cats simmering on the stove.’
He breaks out laughing. Obviously he is enjoying the
scenario he has created in his imagination. Shortie just
stares stupidly. He doesn’t see anything funny.
He is still sitting there staring into empty space
when a warder comes and yells, ‘Time up!’ and leads
Stevo away. Still laughing.
16
THE BIG JOL
In the magistrate’s kitchen something is simmering in
the pot. Take it easy, it’s not the two fat cats. Don and
Kristin are enjoying themselves at the stove. Don is cook-
ing a chicken breyani. He is very sentimental about this
dish because, apart from the traditional Xhosa
umngqusho, this used to be his mother’s favourite. She
learnt it from an Indian colleague from Lenasia. She
would cook it for Sunday dinner, and Don remembers
how he hoped to feast on it for the whole week after
school. But alas, within a day the leftovers would fill the
four-roomed house with the stench of decay. Very few
people had fridges in Soweto those days and his mother
was not one of them, even though she was a staff nurse
at Baragwanath Hospital. In any event, even in a fridge
breyani spoils too quickly and too easily.
Don is truly a chef manqué and Kristin hopes to learn
a few tricks from him. She has a notebook and writes
down every detail as he chops the onion and fries it until
it is brown and then adds grated ginger root, tumeric,
curry powder, cayenne pepper, breyani masala that he
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bought ready mixed, bay leaves, cinnamon sticks,
chopped tomatoes, nutmeg and crushed garlic. Then he
adds pieces of deboned chicken. After a while he adds
basmati rice and some water.
What frustrates her is that he does not measure any
of the ingredients.
‘How am I going to know how much to use when I
cook this for myself ?’ she asks.
‘We never use measurements when we cook,’ he says
with pride. ‘Just use your hand and your head to estimate
the right amount.’
While the pot simmers slowly she offers him some
wine. When they began there was some awkwardness
between them but the dollops of wine have released them
from the bondage of shyness. By the time he adds pota-
toes and pre-cooked brown lentils, which is after almost
an hour, they are like two kids playing house.
She insists on displaying her culinary skills too by
contributing her favourite dish bobotie. She uses some of
the ingredients that Don bought for his breyani, particu-
larly the turmeric, crushed garlic, bay leaves and curry
powder. But she needs other items that are not in
the house. She says she will go to Palm Court, which is
less than five minutes down the street, to buy dried apri-
cots, Granny Smith apples, minced lamb, sultanas and
almonds.
‘You can’t go alone,’ says Don. ‘It’s not safe.’
‘Hey, I’m not a child,’ she says.
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‘I’ll go with you,’ he insists.
‘OK, you go,’ she says. ‘I’ll look after things here.’
He chuckles to himself. He can see through her—she
does not want the neighbourhood to see her traipsing
down the street in a state of inebriation with a black man.
She writes out a list for him. In no time he is back with a
plastic bag of the ingredients, including eggs which she
forgot to write but are essential for the dish. He knows a
thing or two about cooking bobotie, although he pretends
he has barely heard of the dish—it is important to him
that she must believe he has learnt something from her
as well. It is a sensitive situation and he must nurse it.
They lay the table with the best silver and china in
the house—the same that is normally used by her home-
less people. She takes the bobotie from the oven and
brings it steaming to the table, which is already laden
with the breyani and a simple lettuce-and-tomato salad.
‘Smells good,’ he says as he cuts the bobotie into
slices.
‘It’s a traditional Afrikaner dish,’ she says.
‘Cape Malay,’ says Don, and immediately wishes he
could take back the comment—he forgot that he was pre-
tending not to know anything about the dish.
‘Afrikaner, Cape Malay, same dishes mostly. Cross-
pollination,’ she says, without noticing what he regards
as a faux pas. ‘Normally we eat it with yellow rice. But
what the heck, we might as well eat it with your breyani
and have an overdose of meat once and for all.’
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They eat with relish, while guzzling more wine. This
time it is not her cheap room-temperature wine but a
chilled Boschendal Chardonnay that he bought specially
for this dinner.
‘I didn’t know you cooked,’ he says.
‘I used to love it . . . when there was someone to enjoy
my cooking,’ she says with wistfulness in her voice. ‘But
I can learn a thing or two from you. There’s something
sexy about a man who knows his way round the pots.’
Don cannot hide his surprise at this. She is embar-
rassed. She wishes she hadn’t said that. It came out the
wrong way. She hopes Don won’t misinterpret it.
‘Did I say something wrong?’
‘No, no, no. You said something nice. It’s a wonderful
sentiment. My girlfriend doesn’t see things that way
though. She thinks my interest in cooking disgraces all
African men. Just like my love for my cat.’
It is Friday and the magistrate is not going to work
tomorrow. Don suggests that they go to a nightclub in
Melville. They are already tipsy enough to be reckless and
without any reticence at all she jumps at the idea.
‘I’ll change quickly,’ she says.
‘I’ll wait in the Saab,’ he says.
‘Saab?’
He forgot that she leads an unbranded life and would
possibly not know what a Saab is.
‘My car,’ he says.
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‘Oh, why didn’t you just say so? Fancy names mean a
lot to you people.’
‘You people?’
‘Come on! You know I don’t mean it that way.’
Don takes her to a cigar club, a place that he has only
visited as a bodyguard to some businessman. Today,
courtesy of his VIP Protection Services expense account,
he will be one of the patrons. He can be lavish because his
company will charge the whole expense to the
Department of Justice—it is part of protecting the mag-
istrate from the criminals who are threatening her.
Cigar clubs are not Tumi’s scene; otherwise he would
have been a patron here years ago since once in a while,
when she wants to unwind, they do pub-crawl and even
go to some of the nightclubs in Rosebank and jazz clubs
in Sandton. Don has observed that cigar clubs are discreet
places and Kristin will not feel out of place here. But also
there is no chance of Tumi walking in on them.
Kristin is, however, ill at ease as they sit at the bar.
Most of the patrons here are the pretentious nouveau
riche of the new South Africa—mostly black, but with a
few white hangers-on. She looks beautiful with her
blonde tresses hanging to her shoulders instead of her
usual old-fashioned bun, and he is not ashamed to be
seen with her. Her dress is formal and conservative
though—more like something a woman executive would
wear to a business meeting.
‘I never come to places like this,’ she says.
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‘There’s always the first time,’ says Don.
She becomes more relaxed after two fast whiskies,
one after the other. He is amazed at how she can hold her
liquor, especially after all the wine during dinner. He is
determined to ply her with more drink while he takes it
easy.
‘First time? I used to be a socialite, you know? They
didn’t have multiracial clubs like this then but I used to
be at all the good society parties.’
‘Then what happened?’
She shakes her head sadly; she does not want to talk
about it. He is a bit disappointed. He was hoping that at
last she was beginning to open up. After an awkward
silence accompanied by a few gulps of whisky, Don says,
‘It was him, wasn’t it? The man who used to like your
bobotie? It was him who did this to you?’
She giggles nervously.
His cellphone plays Dave Brubeck. He switches it off
quickly as soon as he sees Tumi’s name on the screen. He
does not want to speak with her, not when he is at a cigar
club with another woman.
Shortie watches Don drive out with the magistrate.
He has been biding his time, waiting in the street in a
service van, hoping that the magistrate and her body-
guard would leave the house. But they never did. They
seemed to spend all their lives indoors. He wondered
what the hell they were doing there all this time. He has
established a routine. He watches the house for a few
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hours on the off-chance that she and the bodyguard will
leave. And then he drives home. He returns the next day
in a different car and parks outside a neighbouring wall
and watches the magistrate’s house. After two hours or
so he goes back home.
He should be doing his mischief during the day
when the magistrate is at work, as he did with the rotten
tripe. The bodyguard often goes with her to Roodepoort
and comes back only later. Some days he stays away from
the house and only returns with the magistrate after
work. That would have been the opportunity to get the
cats. But he came with Fingers Matatu once, and he tried
the new locks but failed to pick them. He needed more
time to figure them out, he said.
Daytime is not safe. Not only will passers-by see him
while he tries to entice the cats, but one never knows
when the bodyguard will return.
Shortie’s plan is a simple one. Kidnap the cats and
take them home with him. That will drive the magistrate
and her precious bodyguard crazy. That’s what Stevo
called psychology. Then on a later date, when Fingers
Matatu has consulted his comrades on how to pick the
newfangled locks that were invented long after he had
retired from his cat-burglar business, he will come back
and cook the cats. After putting them to sleep, of course.
Stevo will never know that he sedated them before cook-
ing them. He needs to find out about chloroform or
something like that.
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It will be double psychology when the magistrate
and her bodyguard find the cats cooking after they have
been missing for days.
He climbs the wall into the yard and walks boldly to
the door. He is carrying a small black bag. He goes
straight to the cat flap, opens it and makes cat sounds.
‘Miaow! Miaow! Kitty! Kitty! Miaow!’
He takes out some catnip from the bag and places it
near the cat flap while continuing with the cat sounds.
Soon the magistrate’s cat waggles its way out of the cat
flap. Snowy is much too smart to be attracted by aromatic
smells and silly sounds pretending to be a cat. But the no-
name cat has always been adventurous and is an out-
doorsy type that always jumps out of the cat flap at the
slightest provocation, leaving Snowy slumbering in the
kitchen near the stove.
Shortie tries to catch the cat but it snarls and charges
at him. He retreats and takes out a butcher knife from the
bag. He wants to take it alive but if it is full of fight he
might have to kill it. He charges towards the cat but it
runs in circles on the lawn. Then it stops and looks at him
as if sizing him up. He stares at it too. He is considering
his next move. He leaps at the cat with his butcher knife
at the ready but the cat fights back. He screams as it claws
him, his knife dropping to the ground.
‘ Voetsak! Voetsak!’ he screams.
That’s dog-language for ‘scram!’ and cats don’t
understand it. So, the magistrate’s cat pays no heed to his
command.
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He manages to escape with a few scratches and
stands at a distance. He inspects his bleeding arm and is
mad at himself for allowing this to happen to him. The
cat is arching its back, gearing for a fight. Shortie and the
cat contemplate each other. He is struck by a great idea.
He looks for his bag and finds it near the door. He came
prepared, so he gets some dry cat food from it, and
entices the cat with it. The cat is suspicious at first but
when he throws it one bit, and another one, it eats it with-
out hesitation and loves the taste. He gives it more of the
food and it surrenders. He has his knife ready to stab it.
But he cannot bring himself to kill it. He cannot bring
himself to capture it and put it in the bag either. Instead
he pets it and it purrs with satisfaction.
He takes it in his arms, opens the flap door and puts
it back inside.
As he drives back to Strubensvallei he decides—to
hell with Stevo. He is not going to kill anyone’s cat. From
now on, if Stevo wants to do his psychology he’d better
do it himself. He is done with harassing the magistrate,
once and for all.
At her suggestion Kristin and Don have transferred
to a nightclub in Rosebank. She wants to experience the
nightlife of Johannesburg that she only reads about in the
papers or hears about in court when she is presiding over
a case that involves some skulduggery that took place at
an entertainment venue. He made a point of not choosing
one of the classier nightclubs where someone who knows
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Tumi would be bound to spot him. Or where some mys-
terious tabloid press gossip columnist is likely to hang
out—one who might have seen him often in the company
